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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732098

Illiciting commissions from customers?

Even though we have not even found our shop space yet, we are talking through all the details of setting up shop and planning all our preparation work. This includes speculating how we will best attract potential customers to our shop and illicit from them these “novel ideas” we talked about in the last post. We defined a novel idea as something that comes foremost from a personal desire, not an adaptation of something existing. We’re expecting these to be hard to illicit, especially of first-time customers, and are now wondering if we should focus so much on this part of the story. Is it not just as fantastical to make a custom version of something existing? Yet another bike light jacket – but every time the experience of the customer is unique, they are unique individuals and so the same idea of a wearable bike light will be executed differently each time.

Basically we’re now thinking: the less possibilities we present the customer with, the easier it is for them to start thinking creatively about what it is that they want. We don’t want to overwhelm people with options, choices, possibilities. Rather confront them with concrete proposals (bike light jackets, nudgeables, HID devices….) and have the customization come from the unique people they are.

Concrete Examples – An Opening Collection
If we go down this path and prepare a selection of concrete examples that customers can “choose” from, what should these be. To refresh and update our memories of the E-Textile and Wearable Technology space we compiled a long list of all the projects we know and could find anew. Browsing publications, websites, blogs, our old presentations and our memories.https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11vt9QUQi6SC2DmV8d-J6U-fqXFcQ6jvDn0skn1M4pHU/edit?usp=sharing

Given the variety of projects out in the world – focusing mostly on those that showcase an experimental and/or personal use of e-textile/wearable technologies (artworks, performance, student projects), and less so on commercial ideas (products), here are some of the “trends” we can discern: